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The bot filed that information away for later consideration. Bulkheads were cracked, wall sections out of joint with one another, and corrosion had left holes nearly everywhere.

Dust was omnipresent, and solid surfaces had a thin patina of anaerobic bacteria that had to have been undisturbed for years to spread as far as it had. The changes that had taken place on the Ship during the bot’s extended inactivation were unexpected, and merited strong disapproval. Then it proceeded through the mechanical veins and arteries of the Ship toward the most recent location logged, in a communications chase between decks thirty and thirty-one. Once it had encountered and taken the measure of the Incidental, if it was not immediately successful in nullifying it, it could visit another shellfab and adapt again.ĭone, it recited the Mantra of Shapechanging to properly integrate the new hardware into its systems. For tools it added a small electric prod, a grabber arm, and a cutting blade. The bot slotted itself into the shellfab unit beside its storage niche, and had it make a thicker, armored exterior. The pest also appeared to have a taste for the insulation on comm cables and other not normally edible parts of the ship.

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The bot thought it likely there was only one, or that if there were multiples they were moving together, as the reports had a linear, serial nature when mapped against the physical space of the Ship’s interior. There wasn’t much specific about the pest itself other than a list of detection locations and timestamps. The bot considered the data attached to its task. Just make sure this ‘infestation’ doesn’t get anywhere near the positron device, or we’re going to come apart a lot sooner than expected.” “Whatever it takes to get us in shape to make the jump, do it, Ship. “Does it matter? We reach the jump point in a little over eleven hours,” Baraye said. “I thought those old multibots were unstable,” Chief Navigator Chen spoke up. “It is a task well-suited to it, and does not take another, newer bot out of the critical repair queue.” “This bot is the oldest still in service,” the Ship said. “I was able to resolve most of the problem with judicious venting of spaces to vacuum before the crew boarded, and have assigned a multifunction bot to excise the remaining.” Baraye wondered if the slight emphasis on the word storage was her imagination. “I incurred a biological infestation during my time in storage,” the Ship said. “I swear something scuttled over one of my boots as we were launching. “It’s not just damage from a decade in a junkyard,” Commander Lopez said.

The bots are addressing critical issues first, then I will reprioritize from there.” I have deployed all functioning maintenance bots. “We have adequate engine and life support to proceed. “Eventually, all of it,” Baraye answered, with more patience than she felt. “How much more is going to break on this piece of shit ship?!” Lopez exclaimed. The bot would rather have been fixing something more exciting, more prominently complex, than to be assigned pest control, but the bot existed to serve and so it would.Ĭaptain Baraye winced as Commander Lopez, her second-in-command, slammed his fists down on the helm console in front of him. Nine hundred and forty-four items in the queue? That seemed extremely high, and the bot felt a slight tug on its self-evaluation monitors that it had not been activated for at least one of the top fifty, or even five hundred. “I am assigning you task nine hundred forty four in the maintenance queue,” the Ship answered. “I serve,” the bot announced to the Ship. Its internal clock synced with the Ship and it became aware that significant time had elapsed since its last activation, but to it that time had been nothing, and passing time with no purpose would have been terrible indeed. Its power cells were fully charged, its systems ready, and all was well. It recited the Mantra Upon Waking, a bundle of subroutines to check that it was running at optimum efficiency, then it detached itself from its storage niche. I have been activated, therefore I have a purpose, the bot thought.

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